X Keyboard Configuration Database

The non-arch keyboard configuration database for X Window. The goal is to provide the consistent, well-structured, frequently released open source of X keyboard configuration data for X Window System implementations (free, open source and commercial). The project is targeted to XKB-based systems.

What is it for?

There are many X Window implementations which have very poor support for non-standard keyboards, national layouts and options.

Open Source X Window System implementations (xfree86, x.org) currently have non-synchronized XKB configuration databases: the bugs fixed in one repository are not reflected in the other, new configuration elements are added (in best case) separately and independently to both CVS trees - but usually only one tree gets them. Also, these implementations contain unbalanced and unstructured layout trees (very often one country/language have several layouts, each with its own set of variants).

Commercial X Window System implementations cannot support large variety of national layouts - usually, because of lack of resources. So users from "exotic" countries feel offended and frustrated - their environments are not complete.

The solution which would guarantee quality support for the keyboard configuration data is to have single repository which would serve as meta-project for X servers and OS distributions. X Keyboard Configuration Database is trying to be the one.

License

Development

Releases

0.1 - 25 May 2004, first version. Only single-group layouts are included (tested for compatibility with the multiple layouts feature). Each language/country has no more than one layout and any number of variants.

Contributions to the project. Relations to X Window System implementations.

We kindly ask and encourage people contributing layouts to XFree86 and X.Org repositories to send patches to X Keyboard Configuration Database. We would highly appreciate X implementations using our codebase in their distributions (there was preliminary agreement with X.Org implementation maintainers).